Dunneâs masterstroke of swerving the Leinster Championship and resting Chin for the Championship proper has mugged off a few lads on here.
Taking dummy teams to a whole new level.
Any team news, chaps?
Ya can never tell with Dunne.
I seen the minors running the dunes in Curracloe however on Monday. Thought theyâd be only working on their touch at this time of the year.
Great read from Christy OâConnor.
Youâd wonder how all that winter change and consultation work look now had Offaly or Cork beaten them
Training on yesterday for the Wexford junior football panel who take on Mayo tomorrow. They were training on Tuesday and were told by David Power that he will announce the team to them. 2pm yesterday it goes up on Wexford GAA website, my club mate doesnât make the panel. Fuming he was, bad form from Power.
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How twee
Myself and @bandage only found out online that we werenât on the squad via the internet too. Weâre not fuming though.
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I see Benny Furlong is seething that a couple of junior footballers headed off to America for the summer. 
No one told him till he was going through Enniscorthy that he didnât make the panel.
Enniscorthy no less.
Iâd say someone just made a mistake. Heâll look back on it in years to come and realise that it wasnât that big a deal after all.
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Could someone copy and paste Lee Chinâs Joe.ie interview? I donât want to click into the site.
Harry Kehoe for the injured Podge Doran is Wexfordâs only change. Liam Ryan back on the bench.
When Voon For Chin left Malaysia, he headed for the Emerald Gardens. He was 20 years old and spoke no English when he arrived on South Main Street in Wexford.
Here he found the Emerald Gardens, the Chinese restaurant his aunt ran in Wexford and where Voon For Chin would work as a chef. In time, two of Voon For Chinâs brothers would follow him from Malaysia to Ireland and settle in Wexford as well.
But he was the first in this new world where everything was different. He was the one who would begin a new life seven thousand miles from home in a land which was so used to everything being the same.
Joanne Blackâs home was Wolfe Tone Villas. She was one of seven children who grew up on the estate in Wexford. Her mother May kept an eye on all that happened in Wolfe Tone. Mayâs grandson jokes that if anyone has a problem with him, âthey never get to take me on, itâs her they have to go throughâ.
Joanne Black got a job five minutes from Wolfe Tone and when she started working as a waitress in the Emerald Gardens, she met a young chef seven thousand miles from home. Voon For Chin and Joanne Black became a couple. They had their first child nearly 24 years ago now and they called him Lee.
A couple of years later, they had a daughter Danielle and they, too, would grow up in Wolfe Tone.
When Lee Chin talks about Wolfe Tone, he smiles a lot. It is the place âclosest to his heartâ, the place that shaped him.
Itâs Thursday afternoon and he has driven from Wexford to meet you in Gorey, to meet you halfway. He finds a quiet corner in the hotel and spends an hour telling his story, and his manner is as compelling as what he has achieved.
On Sunday Wexford play an All-Ireland quarter-final against Waterford in Thurles. Wexford are underdogs. Injuries and illness have diminished them, although Lee Chin sees it differently, he often does. The adversity has given more meaning to things. After the defeat to Dublin he says, they could have written the script for the summer, but âweâd have been wrongâ.
Leinster GAA Senior Hurling Championship Quarter-Final, Croke Park, Dublin 21/5/2016 Dublin vs Wexford Dublinâs Paul Ryan and Paudie Foley of Wexford Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne
James Breen, it turns out, played against Cork while suffering from viral meningitis yet he was at training this week. âHeâs a hardy bit of stuff. Youâll never get to the bottom of him. He was back training the other night, thatâs James for you.â
Lee Chin is 23 and he already has the air of a leader, but when you hear his story, itâs hard not to think heâs had those qualities for some time. If you talk to Lee Chin, heâll tell you he picked them up in Wolfe Tone.
London 2012 Olympic Games, Ireland Olympic Team Celebration 15/8/2012 Team Ireland boxing head coach Billy Walsh arrives on stage Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/James Crombie
Growing up in Wolfe Tone, you learn these things, he says. The people of Wolfe Tone will point to men like Lee Chin and Billy Walsh and tell you that their environment shaped them.
âIt could be the way at a young age, the mother opens the door, throws you out on the street and tells you to go and survive,â Chin says, smiling again as he remembers days like these.
âYouâre given a lot of independence there. It would have been a rough enough area in my town, but for us it wasnât. For us, we just wanted to play sport on the street or get up to a small bit of mischief every now and again, but thatâs just the boyo in you and there are a lot of boyos whoâve come out of Wolfe Tone.â
Billy Walsh was born in Wolfe Tone as well and Lee Chin may share some qualities with the boxing coach. He knows Billy pretty well and Lee Chin boxed too, although his mother didnât like it and that seemed to be a good enough reason to give it up.
Billy is âfantasticâ, he says, recalling the time he has spent in his company, looking at a man whose formative experiences he could understand.
âI suppose there comes a time you have to decide do you want to keep going that sort of route of leaving school, getting a job or do you want more. I think Billy chose a different path as well, and look where he is now.â
Sport was how Lee Chin was going to want more. Boxing and soccer were the avenues out of Wolfe Tone, but he saw another route. In recent years, he has seen there were other ways too, but they didnât seem possible then to a kid from Wolfe Tone.
âMy county team-mates, a lot of them have different lifestyles. A lot of them went to college. When I got brought into that world and environment, I noticed thereâs more out there than just dropping out of school, getting a job and living the rest of your life.â
He trained as a barber, but now he is in DIT, trying to make that work, trying to shake the feeling he had since he was a kid that there was something else, that academic life wasnât for him.
All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Qualifiers Round 2, Semple Stadium, Thurles, Tipperary 9/7/2016 Cork vs Wexford Wexfordâs Conor McDonald and Lee Chin celebrate after the game Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne
School? Well, school was tough. When he looks back on it, he thinks of the good times, the fun he had, but the books could never hold him. He was a daydreamer, dreaming of a world beyond school, but where he wasnât sure.
âI grew up in an area where a lot of people never really went to college. A lot of my family never went to college and I was going to follow suit.â
They would ask him what he wanted to do when he grew up and he didnât have an answer. He had some thoughts he might go to England and try and make it as a footballer, but there was something holding him back: hurling.
He played all sports but he was only ever going to commit to one. There was a brief period in the League of Ireland and a time with Wexfordâs footballers but hurling was the thing that transfixed him.
Cadbury Leinster Under 21 Football Championship 1st Round 29/2/2012 Wexford vs Dublin Wexfordâs Lee Chin Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/James Crombie
âEvery day when I wake up the hurl is right in the corner of the room. Itâs the first thing I see when I wake up and itâs the last thing I see when I go to sleep.â
He doesnât know where he got it from. The Blacks didnât hurl and neither did the Chins, but it was the thing he was drawn to.
Sport was always a release and no two days were the same in Wolfe Tone. Sometimes they would play hurling, sometimes they would play soccer, sometimes they might decide that the sport for the day was âbeating the crap out of each otherâ and sometimes Lee Chin would lose himself in the games he played alone with his hurl.
There are times when Lee Chin will see the cars parked outside his club, turn around and go home. Sometimes he thinks there are too many people who could see him when all he wants is the solitude required to make everything right.
Sometimes he wonders what those who see him out in the field nearly every night think when they hear the roars and screams that come from his mouth as he goes through the exercises that are both calming and a preparation.
âSometimes the things I want to do out there are not for someone else to look at because they might not look at me the same way.â
As he got older, he advanced from hitting a sliotar off a wall in the estate to heading for the field, but some of his routines have remained the same.
Ahead of Sundayâs game against Waterford in Thurles, he will have spent a few nights out on the Faythe Harriers field this week with the 15 balls he packed into his bag at the start of the summer.
All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Qualifiers Round 2, Semple Stadium, Thurles, Tipperary 9/7/2016 Cork vs Wexford Corkâs William Egan tackles Lee Chin of Wexford Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Cathal Noonan
He does it to calm his mind, to tell himself that heâs prepared no matter what will come his way.
âI suppose the fear, if there is ever a fear when youâre going to play, is probably a fear of the lack of preparation that youâve put in. I donât allow myself to have that fear.â
So he goes through his routines alone in a field, imagining himself in Croke Park, imagining men around him and what he would do to break free.
âTo be honest, if there was somebody out on the field looking at me through a keyhole theyâd think I was a madman. I do various different things. Iâd scream, Iâd shout, Iâd give out to myself. Iâm trying to imagine scenarios, the atmosphere around me and the emotion that would run through my body if it was on that day of a game and how to settle myself.â
He finds it therapeutic too when he loses himself in these scenarios, driving himself as heâs always been able to do when it comes to sport.
This drive to succeed may have come from growing up in Wolfe Tone, but other things have shaped Lee Chin as well. He has that effortless focus and drive often seen in those who have endured tough times early in their life.
When he was about 14, his parents broke up. He knew what was going on in a way his younger sister Danielle didnât.
âI was at an age where I understood everything that was going on. Some children mightnât understand but I knew what steps were going to be taken, my father was going to have to move out. I knew the process while Danielle was a little bit younger, a little bit more naive, it probably hurt her a lot more because she just saw my father leaving. I was mature enough to nearly accept it - to an extent.â
He absorbed this like he absorbed everything, making it part of his determination to keep going. His mother and father remained great friends and continue to run the Chinese restaurant they had opened on Bride Street.
His mother provided the understanding too. âMy father would always be there for me, but in terms of getting on with things, Iâd have to give the mother a lot of credit because as I said she was very comforting. She would explain to you what was going and not to worry about things, donât let it affect me. Not for a day did I ever let it affect me mentally. I never wanted to go out and do what I wanted to do or be disobedient or anything like that.â
There was no rebellion, just a hardening of the resolve which was also part of growing up in Wolfe Tone. But there were other tests too for the children of Voon For Chin and Joanne Black.
The racist abuse Lee Chin has been subjected to his whole life couldnât define him any more than the flies that swirl around its mane could define a lion, but for a while when he went public about an incident which happened when he was playing for Sarsfields, it was how he was known to the country.
After scoring a goal in a club match, his legs were taken out from under him by an opponent who then racially abused Lee Chin. The abuse was heard by an umpire and Lee Chin and his club decided action should be taken.
All Ireland Senior Football Championship Qualifier Round 2 14/7/2012 Tipperary vs Wexford Wexfordâs Lee Chin dejected at the final whistle Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Lorraine OâSullivan
âNothing like this ever reached the media. It was something that I didnât want to go and chase myself. But then when something brought it to my doorstep I thought, âMaybe I should talk about itâ. Danielle plays football for Wexford so maybe it would help her as well as other kids of mixed race. It might help them to know that theyâre not the only ones this has happened to.â
At the time of the abuse, he went on the Late Late Show. He has never watched the show again, he thinks he was naive in how he talked about it, but if you watch it, you donât see an innocent, you just see a 19-year-old trying to explain how it feels to be him.
He says he maybe didnât understand how he felt about it all, and there was a lot to comprehend.
This was the shocking thing. This wasnât a one-off. The GAA acted swiftly and commendably when it was reported, but Lee Chin had a lifetime of experiences to come to terms with.
He says he has never been able to hide how heâs feeling, no matter how small the thing.
Even this week, something bothered him in training and later that night Liam Dunne rang him to see if he was okay, to wonder why he wasnât himself.
His mother, of course, never missed a sign that he wasnât himself. She was always there to help him, especially when he was trying to make sense of something no child should have to make sense of.
âMaybe at times I didnât want to talk about it, but sheâd still know. And sheâd always come and ask âWhatâs wrong? I know thereâs something wrongâ. Youâd just talk about it. And yes, sheâd make you feel very comfortable about it. She had her way of dealing with it. Sheâs someone who made me feel very proud of who I am and what I am.â
His reaction would vary depending on his mood. He knows this might not be what people want but he isnât here to shape public policy, he is here to survive.
âSome days something might bother you and the next day, it wouldnât. I know this is a very personal thing and it should bother you on the same level every day.â
But that wasnât his experience and when he had a problem, he talked to his mother.
âShe was always the person you went to. I donât know if it was seeking advice, because I donât think there is any advice in those situations. You just give someone your shoulder to cry on. Not literally. Somebody to put their arms around you, youâre looking for a bit of comfort.â
And then he had to go out face the world, something that never seemed to be a problem, even when he was feeling weakened by what he had endured.
GAA Hurling All Ireland Senior Championship Quarter-Final 27/7/2014 Limerick vs Wexford A dejected Lee Chin of Wexford after the game Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Cathal Noonan
âI donât know if it was a confidence thing, sometimes you might be feeling good about yourself and somebody would say something and it doesnât bother you, it just bounces off you. Then there are other days when youâre feeling a bit vulnerable, bit weak and it hurts a lot more.â
What he doesnât say but is left to be understood is that it was always there. The anticipation that somebody might say something would become as corrosive for some as the abuse itself. He figured that the people who said these things on the field didnât mean them, they were hoping to provoke the way people always try and provoke in sport. But that didnât mean he should shake hands at the end and leave it on the field. This was different. This was wounding and personal.
But Lee Chin also instinctively understood one thing: he alone would have to survive it. The fact that he had to find coping mechanisms is an indictment of society then, but outrage wasnât a way of coping either.
âI got this all my life and especially through sport. But then again kids are kids, they donât really know what theyâre saying. Also on the street, and different things, you might get into a bit of conflict with something, they might say a few words to you.â
And what it does, what it is intended to do, is to make you feel alone. One of the worst incidents happened when he was playing League of Ireland with Waterford United. During an away game, he was subjected to a racist chant from fifty or so home fans for most of the game.
âAt that time, I got no comfort from any of my team-mates. If that happened in GAA, the approach would be totally different. The lads would take it upon themselves to do something about it. But in soccer it was happening nearly most of the game, and nothing was ever said about. It was hurtful. As isolating as it was, you felt more isolated from your team-mates. I didnât feel I had the support there.â
Leinster GAA Senior Hurling Championship Final, Croke Park, Dublin 3/7/2016 Kilkenny vs Galway Wexford hurler Lee Chin at the game Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy
Things have changed now. He would handle things differently too, he says.
âIn GAA, when it happens, you have to think you have the support of everyone, they always have my back. I know I have the boys behind me. I wouldnât let it affect me as much as I did any more.â
Sunday they will travel from Wolfe Tone to Thurles to see Lee Chin play for their county. He wondered what the council made of what happened to Wolfe Tone two years ago when it was covered in purple and gold with banners hailing Lee Chin. He is representing his family, Wolfe Tone Villas and Wexford on those days, but he has another constituency too, another constituency which reflects how things have changed.
Since he spoke out in 2012, he has suffered no racist abuse. The country is changing and Lee Chin may have been one of the agents of that change.
He has a younger sister Molly who is eight and itâs no surprise that he feels like a father figure to her, although she seems to have got the same resolve too. âSheâs a hardy girl,â he says.
Thatâs not a surprise. These days, he gets messages from parents with mixed race children telling him that he is their childâs favourite hurler.
âFor me itâs amazing. Iâm very proud of that. The GAA is going to be so multi-cultural. There are going to be so many different races playing our games and we have to be proud of that.â
He loves when he gets these messages, and heâs pleased that what heâs done has made a difference.
âAfter the Offaly game, a mother sent me a photograph of a boy saying he really admires you and youâre his favourite hurler. For me, Iâm very proud of that. If it is me who is giving him the encouragement to want to play hurling, thatâs just special. Itâs great. Itâs everything really. You stood up for what you believed in, things were wrong and coming out the other side kids are looking at it that way.â
Theyâll tell you in Wolfe Tone that having Lee Chin on your side makes a difference. He might put it down to growing up in Wolfe Tone, but the truth may be more complicated, the truth may be that itâs not one thing making Lee Chin the man he is, the man Voon For Chin and Joanne Black can be proud of.
âYouâre living in a country where you are different," he says. "But Ireland is a place now that is so multicultural, itâs normal to be different.â
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Thanks, pal.
I think its time to accept that sportsjoedotie is an acceptable website to link stories from guys.
These wexford lads are by and large a likeable crew. Unlike our noisey neighbours.
Hon Chinner.
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Le chin is an alright sort
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